Anthology Review T3
Anthology Review Term 3 2006-2007
Terms
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- hyperbole
- Exaggeration for the sake of emphasis in a figure of speech not meant literally. An everyday example is the complaint 'I've been waiting here for ages.'
- prologue
- An introductory section of a play, speech, or other literary work. The term is also sometimes applied to the performer who makes an introductory speech in a play.
- comedy
- A dramatic work that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone and that usually contains a happy resolution of the thematic conflict.
- figurative language
- A technique in writing in which the author temporarily interrupts the order, construction, or meaning of the writing for a particular effect. This interruption takes the form of one or more figures of speech such as hyperbole, irony, or simile.
- tragic comedy
- A play that combines elements of tragedy and comedy, either by providing a happy ending to a potentially tragic story or by some more complex blending of serious and light moods.
- pun
- A play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words.
- colloquial language
- The use of informal expressions appropriate to everyday speech rather than to the formality of writing, and differing in pronunciation, vocabulary, or grammar.
- allusion
- An indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work, the nature and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader's familiarity with what is thus mentioned.
- protagonist
- The main character in a drama or other literary work.
- personification
- A figure of speech by which animals, abstract ideas, or inanimate things are referred to as if they were human, as in Sir Philip Sidney's line:Invention, Nature's child, fled stepdame Study's blows
- anaphora
- A rhetorical figure of repetition in which the same word or phrase is repeated in (and usually at the beginning of) successive lines, clauses, or sentences. Found very often in both verse and prose, it was a device favoured by Dickens and used frequently in the free verse of Walt Whitman. These lines by Emily Dickinson illustrate the device
- enjambment
- This is the breaking of a syntactic unit (a phrase, clause, or sentence) by the end of a line or between two verses. Its opposite is end-stopping, where each linguistic unit corresponds with a single line. The term is directly borrowed from the French, meaning "straddling" or "bestriding".
- amplification
- An addition to or expansion of a statement or idea.
- antagonist
- One who opposes and contends against another; an adversary.
- foreshadowing
- A device used in literature to create expectation or to set up an explanation of later developments. In Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, the graveyard encounter at the beginning of the novel between Pip and the escaped convict Magwitch foreshadows the baleful atmosphere and events that comprise much of the narrative.
- alliteration
- (also known as 'head rhyme' or 'initial rhyme'), the repetition of the same sounds—usually initial consonants of words or of stressed syllables—in any sequence of neighbouring words: 'Landscape‐lover, lord of language' (Tennyson). Now an optional and incidental decorative effect in verse or prose, it was once a required element in the poetry of Germanic languages (including Old English and Old Norse) and in Celtic verse (where alliterated sounds could regularly be placed in positions other than the beginning of a word or syllable). Such poetry, in which alliteration rather than rhyme is the chief principle of repetition; its rules also allow a vowel sound to alliterate with any other vowel.
- omniscient narration
- This is a common form of third-person narration in which the teller of the tale, who often appears to speak with the voice of the author himself, assumes a all-knowing perspective on the story being told: diving into private thoughts, narrating secret or hidden events, jumping between spaces and times. Of course, the narrator does not therefore tell the reader or viewer everything, at least not until the moment of greatest effect. In other words, the hermeneutic code is still very much in play throughout such narrations. Such a narrator will also discursively re-order the chronological events of the story.
- hypophora
- Where the speaker poses a question and then answers the question.
- melodrama
- A drama, such as a play, film, or television program, characterized by exaggerated emotions, stereotypical characters, and interpersonal conflicts.
- tragedy
- A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.
- antithesis
- A contrast or opposition, either rhetorical or philosophical. In rhetoric, any disposition of words that serves to emphasize a contrast or opposition of ideas, usually by the balancing of connected clauses with parallel grammatical constructions. In Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), the characteristics of Adam and Eve are contrasted
- similes
- an explicit comparison between two different things, actions, or feelings, using the words 'as' or 'like', as in Wordsworth's line:I wandered lonely as a cloud
- surprise ending
- This is an unexpected conclusion or climax to a work of fiction, which may contain an irony, or cause the audience to reevaluate the rest of the story. A twist ending is the conclusive form of plot twists.
- chorus
- A group of singers distinct from the principal performers in a dramatic or musical performance; also the song or refrain that they sing. In classical Greek tragedy a chorus of twelve or fifteen masked performers would sing, with dancing movements, a commentary on the action of the play, interpreting its events from the standpoint of traditional wisdom. This practice appears to have been derived from the choral lyrics of religious festivals.
- intrusive narration
- The omniscient third-person narrator may choose to guide the reader's understanding of characters and the significance of their story. This type of narrator may be intrusive (commenting and evaluating, as in the novels of Austen, Dickens, and Tolstoy)
- irony
- The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.